An accordion takes a deep breath, filling the extent of its interior cavities. It can accept all types of gases; toxic, smoky, dusty, clean, no matter what, it indiscriminately takes all matter around. In its most unfurled state you will notice each of the ribs along its bellow, flexing and drooping down. When satisfied with its inhalation, it collapses slowly letting out a choir of harmonies that echo the crevasses of its bosom. And everything that was inside is being pushed out to fill the halls of our ears or the surrounding flanks in new mixtures and temperatures, either being sucked back again into the caverns of the instrument or settling in carefully sorted layers somewhere else.

The Turbulenzen im Teich (Turbulences in the Pond) are a halted cycle of sedimentation and dispersion. A party-like scene that sinks beneath the upper most surface of the pond; the closed-circuit biosphere and cultural connections are submerged under the flat lily pad-like panels. Sands and grains bubble up onto the surface, but are also melted into the solid forms that raise above sea level.

The looking glasses that punctuate the perimeter are in a state of transition from their granular origin and infer to a perspective of the scene from above, similar to looking at a collapsed accordion. Like beholding a squeeze box that has two round ends, the bird’s-eye view of the pond gives the impression of a simple arrangement of a squat cylinders, breathlessly folded. The geometric boundaries can be summarized into perfect ovals scattered across a landscape.

But when looking at a compressed accordion, you nevertheless envisage the extent of its breath, which passes from one compartment to the other. With a bit of encouragement, those imaginations could soon be followed the by thoughts of a giant instrument, whose chambers flood and empty of ocean currents and spew volcanic particles that eventually fall like dust onto car windows and scenic green pastures. With time, the ribs contract and the collected dust will be compressed into stone. A stone is very much like the closed squeeze box, full of potential and anticipation for the next inhalation that will break everything up again into particles and fill the lungs of the world to its fullest extent before being spewed out again in a new order.

And its no wonder that this is a party, as very slowly, imperceptible to our impatient ears, there is a gentle hum of turbulences that harmoniously reflect the push and pull of the geological accordion. When the belly is full, the sands gather up to build mountains as they do monuments and buildings, and slip away into ponds and puddles when pressed by human or otherwise natural forces.

Galerie Tanja Wagner is pleased to present new works by Kapwani Kiwanga. A Memory Palace is her first solo exhibition in Germany.

Kapwani Kiwanga's projects often manifest as video and sound installations as well as peformances. She intentionally confuses truth and fiction in order to unsettle hegemonic narratives and create spaces in which marginal discourse can flourish.

In this exhibition Kiwanga offers the visitor a journey through time, constructed spaces, and assembled narratives using image and sound. As the title suggests, the concept of the palace or grand residency is central in the exhibition. The artist references a now-disappeared physical edifice; the former Reich Chancellery of Berlin which was known also as Palais Radziwill or Palais Schulenburg. This building was the setting to a number of historic events and important meetings.

The starting point for the exhibition is the Congo conference, 1884-1885, a series of diplomatic meetings which transpired within this building’s walls. European and American representatives met at the palace and made decisions which would change the geopolitical topography forever. The orders made regulated European trade in Africa, lead to the establishment of the Congo Free State, and set the stage for the ensuing “scramble for Africa”; the fervent colonisation of Africa by European nations. Kiwanga’s investigations take her around, beside, beyond, and before the Congo conference to unearth some intriguing stories. Stories she is eager to relate.

For the opening, the artist will perform a conference-performance based on her research on the Congo Conference which pulls together creation myths, liberatory acts, detective novels and crimes against humanity. Some of these performative elements will find their way into the exhibition where Kiwanga transforms the gallery into a physical manifestation of a memory palace. A memory palace is an ancient Greek method of memory enhancement, which uses visualization to organize and recall information. Items of information to be remembered are mentally associated with specific physical locations within a larger encompassing imagined space. When one needs to retrieve these items one only needs to imagine one’s self on a journeying through this space. Arriving at different imagined locations, images or situations unfold which trigger one to remember associated information.

Kiwanga employs both image and spoken word in her construction into a three dimensional memory palace. The visitor is invited to discover signs which range from obscure to iconic, archival to popular. The images all work together in a quest to hear new stories. As such, in A Memory Palace, Kiwanga offers the visitor a conceptual, temporal, and geographical meander without a definite telos if not to inscribe some facts and fictions into one’s memory.

Kapwani Kiwanga studied Anthropology and Comparative Religions at McGill University, Montréal. She was an artist in residence at: L’Ecole National Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Le Fresnoy: National Contemporary Art Studio (France), MU Foundation, Eindhoven and Le Manège, Dakar.
Her film and video works have been nominated for two Awards of the British Academy of Film and Television, and have received awards at international film festivals. She has exhibited internationally including at Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, Foundation Ricard, Paris, France; Glasgow Centre of Contemporary Art, Paris Photo, Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo, Almería, Spain; and the Art Catalyst, London. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include Jeu de Paume, Paris; Berlin Ethnographic Museum, The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris; Hebbel Am Ufer, Berlin, SALT, Istanbul, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.

When Helmut Newton established his foundation in the fall of 2003, he donated several hundred original photographs which have been preserved by the Prussian Cultural Heritage as a permanent loan. For its tenth anniversary, the Helmut Newton Foundation is now premiering around 200 of these photographs, under the title “Permanent Loan Selection.” These prints, mainly never before shown in Berlin, will be presented in separate rooms according to the three main genres of his work: portraits, nudes, and fashion.

These include numerous portraits of well-known personalities, such as Catherine Deneuve, Paloma
Picasso, Karl Lagerfeld, and David Bowie. The fashion photographs, shot like the others in black and white as well as color, were mostly editorial assignments for renowned magazines that were commissioned primarily in the 1970s and 1980s. Newton’s life-sized Big Nudes were taken in 1980 in Paris; five of them have adorned the walls of the museum lobby since the Foundation first opened. The current exhibition also presents other life-sized nudes.

Finally, in June’s Room, visitors can experience a selection of enlarged contact sheets featuring various constellations of figures, offering a unique view into Newton’s work process.